1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to a method and system adapted to peer-to-peer streaming of media content in a network for distribution of data.
2. Description of Related Art
Today's solutions for media streaming being based on a client-server model are disadvantageous due to high bandwidth requirements on the server side. A reduction of these requirements would demand a peer-to-peer model for data distribution. However, the existing peer-to-peer systems are unsuitable for streaming for a number of reasons, for instance because data arrives unordered, and, in the typical case, it is not possible to start utilizing the received data packets until the final part of the streaming media has arrived. The media may here represent any kind of digital content, such as music, video, digital films or images.
Nodes (peers) in a peer-to-peer network may over time experience drastic changes in bandwidth availability, or even disappear completely. Moreover, the nodes may have asymmetric network connections, usually meaning that they have substantially higher downstream bandwidth than upstream bandwidth.
Hence, there is a need for an improved streaming-media distribution solution, which, on one hand, overcomes the above mentioned bandwidth requirements of the pure client-server model; and on the other hand, avoids the drawbacks of the existing peer-to-peer solutions.